


Blaze of Infamy

by direpenguins



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, F/F, Gen, Harm to Animals, blue and yellow as a villain power couple
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28773594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/direpenguins/pseuds/direpenguins
Summary: In Empire County, Sheriff Yellow and the widow Blue are the law of the land, with young Pink growing up under their watchful care. Until a daring outlaw rises up to challenge their rule: the notorious Rose Quartz with her Crystal Gang.
Relationships: Blue Diamond/Yellow Diamond (Steven Universe), Pearl/Rose Quartz | Pink Diamond
Kudos: 11





	Blaze of Infamy

**Author's Note:**

> Please think of this AU as a fairy tale set “once upon a time in the West.” I’ve deliberately tried not to fuss about historical accuracy, or this fic would never get written. I’m also not going to try and come up with “human” names for everyone. Just imagine that in this reality nobody is weirded out by people being named after colors or stones, just as nobody is weirded out by the fact that 90% of the population is lesbians.

Folks often said that the people of Empire County had two Gods, and neither of them was the one up in heaven. There was Yellow, the indefatigable county sheriff, who kept both sides of the law tight in her fist. And there was Blue, the widowed cattle magnate who was sole mistress of one of the biggest and most profitable privately-owned ranches that side of the continent. One way or another, most every living soul in that county was subject to their divine word.

Some said that this pair of almighties kept faith with an even higher power—again, not He who presides over the angels and saints, but She who presides over the railroad lines that bear Her name, stretching out over the land like long metal fingers. While some may have thought to brand the president of White Diamond Railway Co. a “robber baron,” they would never do so anywhere within her hearing—and she had ears everywhere, as well as eyes, and hands. In Empire County, Yellow and Blue were the two strong hands by which she held dominion over her earthly kingdom.

This holy trinity became a quartet one blustery dark night when Sheriff Yellow rode out to Blue’s ranch house outside of Beech City, carrying a tiny, swaddled bundle.

Officially, the child was an abandoned foundling of unknown parentage, fortunate enough to be taken in by the tender-hearted and generous widow and watched over by the stern and upright sheriff. No one would dare question this story within polite company. Nonetheless, before little Miss Pink was three years old, most everyone in town understood that she was the daughter of White Diamond.

Having a “love child” would certainly be an embarrassment to so grand a personage; and White was not someone who could ever be subject to embarrassment. But like any God, her flesh and blood was held sacred. And so Pink was brought up in tender care.

As a baby, she was sickly. Blue fussed over her endlessly, and Yellow near killed her horse several times galloping to fetch doctors at various hours of night or day.

The sickly baby grew into a bright-eyed and raucous child who loved animals and was constantly bringing them into the house—to the great chagrin of Blue who would find hoofprints on her floors and inky pawprints on her ledgers, not to mention live bugs in her drawers.

One day while Blue and Yellow were in the sitting room Pink came in and introduced them both to her new friend “Wormy,” a large western diamondback rattlesnake. Quick as a thought, the sheriff drew her double-action Colt Lightning and shot the snake’s head clean off as it writhed in Pink’s arms.

Blue sent Pink to her room for playing with a venomous snake, and sent Yellow to the doghouse for shooting so close to the child. While Yellow and Blue reconciled quickly enough, Pink remained sequestered for days, sullen and inconsolable.

There was some local family who had run into trouble with the law, and in exchange for leniency, the sheriff persuaded them to send one of their young daughters to be employed in Blue’s household.

The girl’s name was Pearl. She was paid a nominal salary that was sent home to her parents, but even at the tender age of fifteen, she understood the truth of her situation: she as good as belonged to Blue and Yellow, and her fate lay in their hands.

The impish toddler Blue had doted over was now a girl of fourteen, and becoming more of a handful every day. Pearl was barely a year older than Pink, and yet was brought in to watch over her, as a nursemaid and companion of sorts. “Just keep her happy and out of trouble,” the widow had instructed her.

No one can say for sure how either Yellow or Blue first met the president of White Diamond Rails. What most agree on is that both of them owed her a debt by the time they established themselves in Beech City. It’s said that White with her long fingers pulled strings with the local authorities to get Yellow appointed as a promising young deputy, and that it was also White who first introduced Blue to the wealthy rancher who would become her husband.

The rancher thought of himself as an ambitious and ruthlessly pragmatic businessman. It pleased him, at first, to have a wife of a similar disposition. He never realized that Blue’s ruthlessness far outclassed his. At her core, she was made of something harder.

Though Yellow had gotten her post through White’s dealings, she quickly showed herself to be more than fit for it. The county sheriff at the time was an easygoing fellow, fond of whiskey and bad at poker, and happy enough to turn a blind eye for anyone who made contributions toward supporting these vices. But Yellow had no vices to support, her going was anything but easy, and if she could be bought with something, it wasn’t money. She took it on herself to rally the county lawmen and clean up Beech City and the outlying towns, to great acclaim from the citizenry.

Yellow’s future as the next county sheriff was sealed the day a gang of cattle thieves took the rancher and his wife hostage. At the first whiff of trouble, Yellow rode out with hell at her heels to face eight men all on her own.

The other lawmen who arrived at the scene found nine bodies stretched out on the ground, and the distraught wife standing with her face buried in Yellow’s shoulder. It seemed the deputy had gunned down every last one of the rustlers but was too late to stop them from killing the rancher. The people of Beech City hailed Yellow as the hero who had saved a young widow and brought the law down on those varmints when no one else could.

In later years some malicious-minded folk liked to whisper that the cattle rustlers were nothing but a pretext; that it was Yellow who killed the rancher so she could have his beautiful wife all to herself. Others, with still more malice and perhaps greater sense, insisted that it was Blue who shot her own husband in the back so no one could get between her and the beautiful deputy.

Others said that they worked together to kill him, as a favor to their common benefactor. White Diamond stood to gain a formidable foothold in that part of the country once Blue inherited her late husband’s holdings, and her position became even stronger once Yellow was elected as sheriff.

However it went, the long and short of it is that ever since that day, the pair of them have been as inseparable as the devil and his shadow.

The whole thing had started with Pearl’s idea.

“Keep her happy and out of trouble,” the widow had said. But how, when the two halves of that order seemed to be mutually exclusive? It was Pearl who realized that her charge would not be in trouble as long as no one _knew_ she was breaking the rules. And so, one day, the two of them disguised themselves as cow-boys, “borrowed” a couple of horses, and rode to the edge of town.

It was supposed to be just this once, just for a day... But Pink had been so giddy with joy just to walk the dusty streets with no one minding her, Pearl alone at her side. When it was time for the two of them to head back, she looked so forlorn and dejected that before long Pearl found herself suggesting that they sneak out again, just to see the way the other girl’s whole face lit up.

As a child, Pink had accompanied Blue on her errands a few times, and even trailed after Yellow on her more humdrum sheriff duties; but such outings had been few and far between. No one in town who had seen that little girl all those years ago was likely to recognize the tall figure in a long, bulky duster coat, with a wide-brimmed hat shadowing her eyes.

Still, Pearl saw little good in risking more than they had to. So during their more and more frequent sojourns, she would try to steer Pink to go riding out on the range, far from any prying eyes.

That day they had ridden out to Crystal Pass. Pink was in high spirits, clambering over the boulders and pretending to be a highwayman like in the lurid dime novels that she had to keep hidden from Blue. When she noticed Pearl gazing at her she blushed and fell silent, embarrassed at her own childish capers. In just a month she would turn seventeen.

They hid when they heard the sound of horses. A carriage was approaching, flanked by several riders with their gunbelts strapped on. It was Blue heading to town on some errand. Even from a ways off, there was no mistaking the ornate conveyance she liked to use to get from place to place. Though it had been fixed up fancy, in truth it was a stalwart old stagecoach of the kind that had been used to travel cross-country before White Diamond’s railroads made it obsolete.

As Pink and Pearl watched, someone stepped out in front of the carriage and waved. It was a girl, tall and sturdily built, but with wide eyes and a huge, careless cloud of hair that made her look even younger than the two of them. Her blue gingham dress was darned and patched in several places in a mismatched faded red. She had all the gawky tenderness of a baby colt, with limbs that seemed longer than she knew what to do with; and yet there she stood before Blue’s stately coach as it pulled to a halt.

“Ma’am, my name is Garnet,” she called out. “You don’t know me, but my folks used to work for you. Sapphire and Ruby.” She took a few tentative steps closer to the carriage. “I came all this way to ask if you couldn’t find it in your heart to let them off the hook. They’ve been on the run for as long as I can remember. Please, ma’am, they’re good folks. They don’t deserve to live like that...”

“That’s close enough,” came the chilly voice from inside the carriage. Pink fancied she could hear the click of the rifle Blue kept under her seat.

Tall as Garnet was, she looked awfully small in the shadow of that carriage. Still, she clasped her hands together and carried on. “They told me how it was, ma’am, all those years ago. You had some important business to do over in Oaken Town... But your baby was sick and you couldn’t leave her. You sent Sapphire to close the deal in your place, and escorts to guard the money. Ruby was one of them.”

“The one that never came back,” said Blue. “I can’t say that I recall the face of that rough-rider who cost me fifteen hundred dollars... but Sapphire, I remember well. My best clerk at the time. I was told that she and this Ruby ran off together after losing my money.”

“It wasn’t their fault,” Garnet pleaded. “Bandits attacked the train along the ridge... Sapphire could have been killed if Ruby didn’t save her...”

“I hired her to protect _my money_. That, she did not do.”

Garnet glanced skittishly about her as Blue’s armed guards dismounted. “Ruby wanted to come back and explain herself, but Sapphire was afraid for her. She thought you would never forgive them.”

“She thought correctly. She was always a sharp one, that Sapphire.”

Pink had never paid enough attention to money to know how bad of a loss fifteen hundred would have been for Blue. But even if it was petty change, it wouldn’t matter. Blue’s muse and model in all business dealings was White Diamond; she would never suffer a weak link in her chain.

Garnet was looking more and more frantic, shifting from one long leg to the other, like she was inclined to bolt. “I’ll work,” she declared. “I can do work for you on your ranch, for as long as it takes to pay you back.”

“As if I would trust a child of such desperados to run loose on my property.”

From where they were crouched behind the rocks, Pink and Pearl could just see an elegant, long-fingered hand gesturing dismissively through the square window of the carriage. The armed escorts closed in all around.

“Blue is just gonna cart that poor girl away,” Pink whispered urgently to Pearl beside her. “Turn her over to Yellow like some criminal, when she didn’t do anything...”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Pearl insisted. “You aren’t even supposed to be here. If Blue finds out...”

“She won’t find out. You said so yourself, didn’t you? She won’t recognize me like this.” Pink pulled her dark red kerchief up just beneath her eyes, concealing her face.

Pearl looked at her with dawning horror. “We’re not armed. They are.”

“It’s not as if we’re actually going to rob them. We just have to make a big enough ruckus so that girl Garnet can get away.” She hesitated a moment. “I mean, _I_ have to make a big enough ruckus.” Impulsively, she reached over and grabbed Pearl’s hand. “You don’t have to do this with me.”

“Yes I do,” said Pearl breathlessly. “I mean, I want to.”

“If anything happens—”

“I go where you go.”

Though half of Pink’s face was hidden, Pearl could see the smile in those eyes. At some point, seeing that smile had become more essential to her than seeing the sun rise in the morning or the stars emerge at night, and certainly more important to her than doing her employer’s bidding.

Pink got up on the crest of the boulder, trying desperately to look like a dangerous outlaw, as Pearl climbed up beside her. When she called out to the ones below, it was with words from a salacious dime novel Yellow had chewed her out for reading.

“Stand and deliver!” she cried. “Your money or your life. We are the Crystal Gang!”

**Author's Note:**

> The premise and plot for this fic was developed some time before “Legs from Here to Homeworld” aired, which is why White Diamond doesn’t actually make an appearance (to say nothing of Spinel or Pink Pearl). If I manage to get around to writing the self-indulgent prequel about Blue and Yellow, White should have more of a role.


End file.
